How would you reckon?
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August 9, 2009, 3:48 pm
By Ashley Southall
The debate over former President Bill Clinton’s trip this week to North Korea has drawn in one of his wife’s predecessors, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Mr. Kissinger, who served as the architect of American foreign policy under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, wrote an editorial published on several news Web sites Sunday, including that of The New York Times, about the long-term implications of the former president’s trip on negotiations with Pyongyang.
Mr. Clinton, who is married to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il last week in the capital Pyongyang and secured the release of two American journalists imprisoned there.
The trip’s critics said the endeavor, which the Obama administration said was a private humanitarian effort, was the equivalent of a ransom payment, and that it put Americans living and working abroad at risk.
Mr. Kissinger called the women’s imprisonment “blackmail,” and urged the Obama administration not to be intimidated by Pyongyang as it presses North Korea to disarm.
“The benign atmosphere by which it culminated its latest blackmail must not tempt us or our partners into bypaths that confuse atmosphere with substance,” Mr. Kissinger wrote. “Any outcome other than the elimination of the North Korean nuclear military capability in a fixed time frame is a blow to nonproliferation prospects worldwide and to peace and stability globally.”
Mr. Kissinger fretted that the visit had given North Korea just the propaganda it needed to portray itself as legitimate, and he questioned whether the visit had given other nations an incentive to stockpile nuclear weapons.
“A visit by a former president, who is married to the secretary of state, will enable Kim Jong Il to convey to North Koreans, and perhaps to other countries, that his country is being accepted into the international community,” Mr. Kissinger said, “precisely the opposite of what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has defined as the goal of U.S. policy until Pyongyang abandons its nuclear weapons program.”
He said Mr. Clinton’s trip fueled speculation about possible bilateral talks between North Korea and the United States outside of the so-called Six-Party talks. But the success of any agreement between the two countries, he said, would hinge on the support of North Korea’s neighbors, who have been involved in the talks: China, South Korea, Russia and Japan.
“These countries should not be made to feel that the United States uses them as pawns for its global designs,” Mr. Kissinger said.
But the trip was not enough to pose a serious threat to negotiations, and Mr. Kissinger urged the administration to keep its goal for nuclear disarmament in North Korea saying, “the administration is still in a position to achieve a beneficent long-term outcome.”
